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Jazz Articles about Obed Calvaire
Cecile McLorin Salvant: Mélusine
by Katchie Cartwright
Wynton Marsalis was right, Cécile McLorin Salvant is the sort of singer who comes along only “once in a generation or two." A MacArthur Fellow, multiple Grammy winner, and self-described eclectic, Salvant creates projects that encompass an astonishing array of idioms and historical periods, which she interrelates inventively and interweaves with original compositions. Here, she plumbs the francophone side of her repertoire. French songs have cropped up regularly in her live shows, but less on disk. Mélusine fills the gap ...
Continue ReadingLisa Hilton: Paradise Cove
by Lisa Hilton
"I think we all need jazz in our lives these days. From its inception, jazz and blues were created to boost moods or morale by America's earliest composers, such as Scott Joplin, Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton, and Nick La Rocca around the beginning of the 1900s. The music on Paradise Cove was composed and created to refresh and reboot our collective spirits and inspire all to create a personal “cove" or protected “paradise" for our well-being. Our world desires and ...
Continue ReadingMike Moreno: Standards From Film
by Chris May
At last. An enjoyable alternative to the ghastly albums of “jazzed up" hymns and Christmas carols which spew forth every holiday season. There is nothing overtly Christmassy about guitarist Mike Moreno's Standards From Film, but it is appropriate that the album, recorded in New York in December 2021, was released in the UK in early December 2022 and came out in the US a month or so earlier. It nails the seasonal nostalgia spike and then some. ...
Continue ReadingLisa Hilton: Paradise Cove
by Mike Jurkovic
At a time in our collective consciousness when it appears nothing is functioning as it once did, or is as reliable as it once was, or gives us purpose and solace as we once knew, along comes the soft sustaining magic of Lisa Hilton's gorgeous new recording, Paradise Cove, and for all of its enchanting forty-five minutes all is right with the world again. Hilton may not have the wild chops of many of her peers or the ...
Continue ReadingKate McGarry + Keith Ganz Ensemble: What to Wear in the Dark
by C. Michael Bailey
Being taken for granted is the greatest tribute and worst slight to any artist. Kate McGarry has made music that brilliantly colors outside the lines since her release, Show Me (Palmetto Records) in 2003 (there was a 1992 standards release, Easy To Love (Vital Records) that is out-of-print). Her career has provided five provocatively thoughtful and inventive recordings between that release and 2018's The Subject Tonight Is Love (Binxtown Records). Listeners have come to expect something a little different from ...
Continue ReadingKate McGarry + Keith Ganz Ensemble: What to Wear in the Dark
by Dan McClenaghan
Let us start with a nod to Steely Dan, the rock/jazz group headed up by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, a pair of tunesmiths who hit a career zenith in the early 1970s with albums like Can't Buy A Thrill (1972), Countdown To Ecstasy (1973), Pretzel Logic (1974) and Aja (1974), all on ABC Records. The group drew in top jazz artists to help craft their albums—saxophonists Wayne Shorter and Tom Scott, guitarists Larry Carlton and Lee Ritenour, drummers Steve ...
Continue ReadingDave Holland: Another Land
by Ian Patterson
Though bass legend Dave Holland's entire career has been one marked by adventure, it has been a while since he recorded back-to-back albums with the same working group. Recordings such as Hands (Dare2, 2010), with flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela, the duo outing The Art of Conversation (Impulse! 2014) with Kenny Barron, Blue Maqams (ECM, 2017) with Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem and Good Hope (Edition Records, 2019) with tabla maestro Zakir Hussain and Chris Potter, suggest a musician increasingly stimulated ...
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